A mixed but light corporate bag on the last full day of trading ahead of the festive break and in the markets, Footsie's Santa rally kicked off.
Notably, wearable tech firm Fitbug (LON:FITB) jumped nearly 50% in the afternoon before easing back after it secured additional working capital to support the roll out of its new product.
Fitbug, which sells activity tracking devices as well as digital fitness plans, revealed it is to receive £650,000 via a loan from shareholder NW1 Investments (which owns about 5% of the company).
The loan is repayable at the end of July 2017 and carries a modest 2.5% interest above the base lending rate.
To the oil space and Empyrean Energy's (LON:EME) share of production at the Sugarloaf project in the Eagle Ford Shale, Texas, rose by almost 6% in the latest quarter.
Marathon Oil operates the project and Empyrean has a 3% working interest.
Production in the three months to September rose by 5.6% to 114,982 boe with a 4.5% increase in average daily production to 1,250 boe net to Empyrean.
Also in the sector, offshore West-Africa focused Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (CVE: XOP; LON: COPL) said president and chief executive Arthur Millholland has bought 5mln shares in the company.
The transactions were made on December 21 and December 22.
Following this, Millholland is beneficially interested in around 2.3% of the capital. COPL shares raced up over 21%.
US Oil & Gas (USOP) told investors that had hired management advisor and accountancy firm LHM Casey McGrath to assist in the admissions process as junior oil group continues efforts to get a new listing on a recognised stock exchange.
It also said it is confident of moving forward on both corporate and operation sides of the business, despite slow progress due to what it describes as ‘extremely high’ risk aversion in the troubled oil market.
Elsewhere, Sula Iron & Gold (LON:SULA) told investors it remained optimistic about the company’s future, and it is not aware of any reason for its recent share price decline.
The shares fell as much as 52% to as low as 0.19p from 0.38p since the release of a new CEO blog entry on its own website on Monday.
In today’s statement, Sula highlighted that the most recent funding, announced October 14, covered an extended drill programme at the Ferensola gold project, and that work was completed on budget and ahead of schedule.
To the diggers, and Patagonia Gold (LON:PGD) says Argentina has removed the tax on gold exports from the South American country.
The Argentine government has confirmed that the removal of export tax on farm and industrial products also included the 5% tax on mining products.
Argentina introduced the mining export tax in December 2007.
“This measure coupled with the recent announcement removing exchange controls and the import restrictions continues to improve the overall economic environment in Argentina and opens new opportunities for Patagonia Gold,” it said.
Patagonia shares were unchanged at 1.75p.